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| THE HAPPENING |
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| Actors: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Ashlyn Sanchez, Betty Buckley |
| Director: M. Night Shyamalan |
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Distributor: 20th Century Fox |
| DVD release: 7 October 2008 |
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Runtime: 91 minutes (1 disc) |
| Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC |
| DVD features: Audio tracks (5.1 Dolby Surround - English; Dolby Surround - Spanish, French), Subtitles (English, Spanish), Closed captioned, Deleted scenes w/ intros by M. Night Shayamalan, "The Hard Cut" featurette, "I Hear You Whispering" featurette, "Visions of the Happening: A Making-of Featurette," "A Day for Night" featurette, "Elements of a Scene" |
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Usually, I really enjoy the movies of M. Night Shyamalan. I loved The Sixth Sense and really liked Signs . I even liked Lady in the Water and The Village . But The Happening - oh my. Words nearly fail me when I attempt to catalogue all that is wrong with this movie.
The movie begins with people in Central Park. A wind moves through, and people start to repeat themselves. Then, in the confusion, they either die in a gruesome way or jump off buildings, hang themselves from trees, etc. No one understands what is going on, but it is deduced early on that they should avoid being outside. Professor Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) gets his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), and they meet up with his co-worker Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter at the train station so they can get away from Pennsylvania. Julian's wife is supposed to catch up with them later.
It soon becomes apparent that no matter how they try to get away from the destruction, it's moving outward from New York. Is it a terrorist attack? Alien invasion? Both of those would have been welcome plot points, but no. The characters eventually discover the source of the airborne toxin. I'll avoid a spoiler here, because some of you won't believe the movie is this bad and will insist on watching it, and I want you to have something to anticipate.
Fortunately, the movie is mercifully short, because it's difficult to believe that the actors even bought into what they were saying. The dialogue is stilted and quite unrealistic, and nothing in the show is scary because it all seems so silly-fake. The deaths are pretty awful to view, so it definitely lives up to its R rating, but other than that, The Happening leaves common sense in the dust.
There are some behind-the-scenes "making of" shorts, some deleted scenes (more people dying) and some extended scenes (oh, joy). Overall, this is a movie to skip, unless you are a die hard Shyamalan fan. Even then, it's still pretty bad.
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